Hello!
I have a fairly advanced hangover from sharing a bottle of wine with a friend last night at dinner, which seemed like a respectable decision at the time but clearly was not.
Luckily, it is CARLA’S DREAM SALAD video day. This is a brand new/unpublished recipe—the veggie-packed, chickpea-embellished, cheese-adorned, creamy, crunchy, salad of my literal dreams.
The combo of things in play here harkens back to my early roots as a humdrum little office worker who couldn’t wait to go out at lunchtime and hit the mix-and-match salad bar. Ah, the glory days! The mix I’d ask for at a choose-seven-toppings type of place are reunited here: romaine, chickpeas, cukes, tomatoes, avocado, cheese, Dijon vinaigrette. But when you take the time at home to be the salad chef, you’re no sad nine-to-fiver. You’re the queen of greens, the garbanzo aficionado, the majordomo of tomato1.
Chickpeas: marinated. Cukes: cute-cut and seasoned. Cheese: majorly upgraded (I used Humboldt Fog, an iconic and beloved California cheese). Avocado: in abundance. Pickled peppers: in attendance. This salad is, in my opinion, flawless.
It’s April but here in NYC it feels like May. It’s picnic season kick-off. Bookmark this one for those too-hot-to-cook nights. Your alone salad. Your deluxe side salad. Your vegetarian offering at all the gatherings. It’s your soigné salad for working from home. It’s the fantasy salad that all those other lunch salads never could be. It’s also insane stuffed inside of a pita, and if you’ve never had a salad sandwich, take that as a sign.
Thank you for watching and reading. And don’t worry about me: I’m sure I’ll feel better as soon as that Alka Seltzer kicks in.
xoCLM
